The Court is their Classroom - Helping Immigrants Achieve Status

All their hours of practice, their dry-runs with professors, and their meticulous paperwork and notes were about to pay off. Brittni Downs and Ana Sami, both students at the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University, arrived at Immigration Court prepared to defend their first client.

"We felt ready, but we were still nervous," said Brittni. "While we waited in the courtroom, we saw someone get deported because his attorney had come unprepared. It was a huge wake up call for us. We weren’t in class anymore. People were facing actual consequences, and our client’s fate rested solely in our hands.”

Brittni and Ana met their client through CUA Law’s new Immigration Litigation Clinic, which partners with Catholic Charities’ Immigration Legal Services to offer students an intensive exposure to immigration law through classroom work and actual trial experience. Throughout the year-long course, students apply the principles they learn from textbooks to real-life immigration cases our ILS team is currently working on.